


Collateral Damage

by OldToadWoman



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 08:21:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18774841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldToadWoman/pseuds/OldToadWoman
Summary: The camp is always one practical joke away from anarchy.





	Collateral Damage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anna/gifts).



> Collateral damage was to be expected. This was a war after all. Innocent bystanders needed to look after themselves and get the hell out of the way.

The nurses, however, were off-limits. That was the only rule.

The patients were also off-limits, but that was so unthinkable that a rule covering them never even had to be spoken.

But on the subject of nurses, it still required a certain amount of effort to resist lapsing into boorish habits. If you asked any of the doctors what they thought of the nurses, they would have gushed effusively using words like _awe_ and _respect_. 

If you asked any of the nurses about doctor-nurse interactions, you would have gotten a different story altogether using words like _arrogant_ and _condescending_ and _sonofabitch_. 

If confronted, the doctors might blame their behavior on the army, but, in truth, every one of them was tenfold better than they’d been back home, where they’d barely given their nurses a thought and too often dismissed women in general as decorative. 

Here, in this war, the nurses were off-limits.

Except for Margaret. 

There was a hard line that couldn’t be crossed. That line ran right down the center of Margaret Houlihan.

No one was entirely sure which side of the line Klinger was on.

The first innocent bystander was Rizzo, who shuffled into the motor pool first thing in the morning with only one eye open, reluctantly sipping at a mug of Igor’s terrible coffee, only to find Captain Pierce literally rolling in the dirt wheezing with laughter. 

The Willys M38 was yellow. _Yellow._

Rizzo threw his coffee and cussed them both out. 

Captain Hunnicutt hadn’t technically been doing anything that Rizzo could tell, but he was looking far too smug to be innocent.

Rizzo wouldn’t have minded if they’d painted the Willys _MB_ , which was overdue for new brakes and had an odd hitch in the steering. He had a whole list of repairs to perform on the older Jeep and requisitioning the olive drab paint to get it back in regulation order would have nicely delayed all of that. Rizzo could have gotten _an entire month_ ’s worth of not working out of a yellow _old_ MB Jeep.

But Colonel Potter himself had requisitioned the M38 for a tour with a visiting general the next day and that meant Rizzo was going to have to spend the entire day either re-painting the M38 with paint he didn’t think they had in stock or fixing the brakes and steering on the MB.

Hunnicutt claimed he couldn’t even tell the difference between the new Jeep and the World War II surplus, which is when Rizzo threw his coffee and brought Hunnicutt’s mother into the conversation. 

Rizzo had been raised to be a gentleman, and a gentleman did not bring another fella’s mother into the conversation, but that was just one step too far.

The Jeep was yellow. The _new_ Jeep was yellow. With a checkered stripe down the side. There was a small plaque attached to the back that at first glance appeared to be stamped out of metal, but when Rizzo looked closely he discovered it was wood with faux-rust painted around the edges. Carefully chiseled into it were the words:

LICENSED  
HACKNEY CARRIAGE  
CITY OF BOSTON  
EXP JUNE 1953 

Rizzo never got a satisfactory explanation out of anyone. Klinger wouldn’t even tell him who had requisitioned yellow paint.

*

Nurse Kellye was the next casualty, which would have been a clear foul if it had been anyone other than Major Houlihan who had misjudged the placement of the tripwire. 

Kellye herself wasn’t sure who to be angriest at, the head nurse who was at least very apologetic and made it up to her by covering several of her shifts, or Major Winchester whose chivalrous, “After you,” had sent her walking into the trap clearly meant for him. 

He feigned innocence, but she never quite believed him.

She had to wash her hair _twice_ before she got all the oatmeal out.

*

Saturday morning, the entire camp—nurses and patients alike—were awoken to the sound of an inhuman banshee howl. 

The source was never officially confirmed, but for the next month Captain Hunnicutt was never seen in public without a surgical mask with a mustache painted on it.

 

*

On Sunday, Father Mulcahy _swore_ —depending on your opinion of the word _“Poop!”_ —right in the middle of mass. Colonel Potter was heard to offer the opinion that he didn’t think the incident was related to recent shenanigans and Rizzo tried to reassure him that Jesus could turn himself into unsweetened grape Kool-Aid just as easily as wine so it shouldn’t really matter, but Mulcahy still stormed off afterward muttering about “pooping poopers!”

*

The visiting general very nearly made it out of camp unscathed. 

The night before leaving, he witnessed Captain Pierce running through camp, naked and screaming, and inquired after the cause. Someone—no one ever confessed, Major Houlihan accused Captain Hunnicutt, who accused Major Winchester, who accused Major Houlihan—told the general that Captain Pierce had been bitten by the endemic Korean Butt Bug, which, the general was led to understand, was like a bed bug, but exclusively bit butts and then burrowed upwards into the brain resulting in total insanity. There was no known cure. 

The only effective preventative measures were to either wash all clothing and bedding in industrial machines—their inadequate supply was limited to surgical linens—or to sprinkle your sheets with an ancient Korean medicinal powder. 

The ancient Korean medicinal powder was, in fact, itching powder from a mail order firm in Seattle.

The general actually requisitioned an extra set of industrial laundry equipment for them after that so it was technically a win.

*

The mashed potatoes were blue.

Rizzo was the only one who didn’t consider this a worse offense than a yellow Jeep, though he had to admit that he couldn’t actually eat them without closing his eyes. Any time he risked a glance at this plate, his stomach rolled over.

Igor just started handing out blindfolds at the end of the chow line.

It was _almost_ funny.

The entire camp had to sacrifice one meal for it, but watching Captain Pierce have a complete meltdown was well worth it. Even Father Mulcahy took his blindfold off to watch that.

The next day wasn’t even almost funny.

Igor refused to mash any more potatoes when he had a nearly full vat of leftovers. 

Aged blue mashed potatoes were not more appetizing than fresh blue mashed potatoes. 

Father Mulcahy made a clever M*A*S*H-ed potatoes pun that absolutely no one noticed. He liked to think that God thought it was funny.

Major Houlihan kept a list of anyone who ate them and scheduled tests for anyone who hadn’t already been listed with color blindness. Unsurprisingly, this included Igor.

It was the day _after that_ that the full horror sunk in.

There were blue potato pancakes, blue shepherd’s pie, and even the stew had taken on a bluish cast. _Bluish_ was somehow worse than blue.

“As God as my witness, I had no idea how many things leftover mashed potatoes could be made into,” was the closest Major Winchester came to offering an apology.

Colonel Potter was willing to turn a blind eye to occasional tomfoolery, but when the collateral damage exceeded acceptable losses, he brought it all to a halt. He himself had eaten worse in World War I and had even chuckled quietly during Captain Pierce’s conniption, but the nurses _and the patients_ ate the same food. 

Which was how the 4077th’s surgeons—and one head nurse—exchanged their scalpels for potato peelers and spent an entire week on KP duty.


End file.
